That's the wrong question to ask in the context of Haswell-E and X99. Anyone buying these is by definition not a normal person. Ask again once DDR4 hits meinstream platforms. For iGPU it will provide obvious benefits, whereas for regular operation you'll probably see a modest performance increase, equivalent to 1 or 2 CPU frequency bumps (it's been like that for DDR2 and 3 as well).Reply

It will probably all start out that way. DRR3 had high latencies when it first came out, DDR2 did to, and DDR1.... Actually, I don't remember how DDR1 compared to SD RAM anymore, but it certainly got better as it matured.Reply

It will absolutely get better with age. Think of this more like DDR3 800; it was a thing for a little while at launch, but was quickly bumped up to 1333 with lower latency, and then 1600+ as things went forward. We will have the better part of a year to get things a right before mainstream platforms start using this, so I would not worry about it.Reply

As others have said, it should quickly get better. But there's more: DDR4 is supposed to be a bit faster at similar specs due to improved efficiency. Let's see how this works out!

Furthermore: this is for businesses who wouldn't run current Intels at anything higher than DDR3-1600, because they're not specified for anything faster. and if they can keep up DDR4-2133 15-15-15 for 16 GB modules it's actually not that bad.Reply

Pricing's the most important part, the cost will be absorbed by system integrators regardless but whether there's price parity or an increase will determine how quickly enthusiasts adopt a platform that uses DDR4.

I imagine everyone will soon slap spreaders on modules regardless of whether it's needed or not, tho if you're making bland green DIMMs you might as well.Reply

performance memory at 1600+ could probably use at least a basic spreader, especially when you don't know what kind of environment it is going to be installed in. I am a firm believer in AC in by house, but some crazy people somehow enjoy 80*f temps, and computer parts may not deal so well for them. So better safe than sorry I suppose.Still, with modern processing, lower voltage, and a cycle time, I can't imagine these getting all that warm.Reply

These are honestly just garbage sticks. I see no reason anyone would buy DDR4 sticks that:1. have only 8 GB for a DDR4 set2. provide only 2133 MHz bandwidth for DDR43. add to this worst you can get CL15 timings4. also these are not even LPDDR4/notebook oriented modules so you can't excuse the specs

What we have here is a product that is targeted at desktops, but every DDR3 2133 set outperforms it. The only advantage of this set -- low voltage -- doesn't matter for a desktop PC.Reply

If it was possible to make DRAM itself dramatically faster, we'd never have gone down the whole DDR1/2/3/4 cycle with each generation roughly corresponding to doubling the databus speed and doubling the on-dimm parallelism to feed it. PC-133, DDR1-266, DDR2-533, DDR3-1066, and DDR4-2133 all have the dram running at the same speed; and just use faster/more parallel controllers to read/write to more locations within the ram chips at once.

This is also why we should expect to see DDR4 speeds ramp up fairly quickly; as the engineers get more practice in building faster controllers; the actual dram has plenty of headroom before it catches up with the speeds at which it's been made to operate in DDR3.Reply

A rule of thumb in processor power consumption is that the max load power is proportional to the clock frequency times the square of the voltage. I promise you that these sticks use much less power than their ddr3 equivalent. That being said they're pretty low performance and in a HEDT environment the tiny amount of power that ddr3 isn't an issue. It matters more in server blades with hundreds of sticks or in laptops were every mW counts.Reply

I think the vertical heights for the PCB are set in the DDR4 spec itself; even if they don't need the space internally for routing connections in the PCB the height may have been selected for mechanical reasons. If they kept the length the same and but made them shorter they'd become more prone to bending or breaking.Reply